Since the trial was rather lengthy, no attempt will be made to review all of the evidence offered by the Government to prove its case. A summary, however, of the evidence relied upon to dispose of the motions for acquittal follows.

(2) On the way home from New York City, Wilberta Lawson delivered a package of narcotics to the Philadelphia residence of Walter Meadows at 3:00 or 4:00 A.M. on May 1, 1970.

(3) Bernice Wilcox made similar pick-ups for Eugene Lawson.

(4) When arrested on October 2, 1970, Walter Meadows was in possession of two bags of heroin and had never been treated anywhere for addiction.

(5) In October, 1970, Eugene Lawson was attempting to purchase a kilogram of pure heroin from James Wright in New York City for approximately $27,000.

(6) On October 6, 1970, Eugene Lawson, under surveillance, visited an apartment at 146 W. 120th Street, New York City. He left the premises with several packages that he placed in the trunk of his car. Shortly thereafter he was followed onto the New Jersey Turnpike and arrested. Searches of his car and person uncovered substances that were subsequently identified as: (a) 30.9 grams of pure heroin; (b) 1.15 grams of a mixture of cocaine hydrochloride and sugar; and (c) twenty 1/4 ounce blocks of mannite, a substance used to adulterate heroin for street use.

(7) On October 6, 1970, a search was conducted of the premises of Apartment 5, 146 W. 120th Street, New York City. The narcotics and narcotic-related materials that were seized there can best be described as being of factory proportions. The heroin, cocaine, cutting or adulterating materials, scales and plastic bags that were seized were introduced as Government exhibits 11 through 32.

(8) On October 5, 1970, Willie J. Rhynes sent a $1200 money order for Eugene Lawson to the Western Union office in Philadelphia. The money order listed the sender as Willie R. Hynes. On October 5, 1970, a conversation between Rhynes and Eugene Lawson indicated that Lawson was going to pick up something for Rhynes the next day. It also indicated that since this was "the first time" Lawson wanted to personally show Rhynes "what to do". Although Rhynes testified that the $1200 was sent to Lawson for a legitimate business purpose, the totality of the circumstances entitled the jury to conclude that the money was sent to acquire narcotics from the purchase that Eugene Lawson made in New York City the next day.

The above brief outline of the evidence introduced at trial leaves this Court convinced that the cases involving those defendants implicated were properly submitted to the jury.

"No error is found, as charged by appellant, in the refusal of the district court to instruct the jurors to disregard what they had heard when records of conversations between appellant and Finneran were 'played' in the hearing of the jury during the trial . . . . [The] mere fact that certain portions of the mechanically recorded conversations were less audible than others did not call for exclusion of what the jurors personally heard from the 'playing' of the records. There would be no more valid reason for exclusion of the mechanically recorded conversations than there would be for excluding competent conversations, overheard in part, by human witnesses."

"Unless the unintelligible portions are so substantial as to render the recording as a whole untrustworthy the recording is admissible, and the decision should be left to the sound discretion of the trial judge."

Since the sound quality of the tapes admittedly was less than excellent and the speech patterns furthered the difficulty in understanding the tapes, I decided that the only fair and feasible way to have the jury effectively consider the recordings was to utilize the transcripts as a listening aid. Other methods of presenting the intercepted conversations to the jury would have been unduly prejudicial either to the prosecution or the defense. On the one hand, simply to play the recordings for the jury one time without the aid of the transcripts would have rendered some of the conversations ineffective as evidence under the circumstances of this case. On the other hand, to play each recording several times to the jury would have unduly prolonged the trial, and possibly caused prejudice to defendants by excessive repetition of Government evidence. Thus, since I was convinced that the transcripts were in all material respects accurate, I adopted a procedure which I deemed fair to both sides.

"Transcribed notes, made by a stenotype operator from hearing the records repeatedly 'played', were properly excluded . . ."

Schanerman dealt with notes transcribed by a stenotype operator whereas the instant case involved transcripts prepared by the agent who had directed and participated in the interceptions and had personally familiarized himself with the voices of the defendants. In addition, Schanerman, handed down in 1945, was not decided with a view toward how best to implement a comprehensive electronic surveillance statute such as that involved in the instant case. In view of these differences, the single phrase in Schanerman hardly seemed dispositive.

Defendants argued that the cases allowing written transcripts justify the use of such transcripts only for the limited purpose of aiding in the identification of the speakers. See Fountain v. United States, 384 F.2d 624 (5 Cir.1967), cert. denied, sub nom. Marshall v. United States, 390 U.S. 1005, 88 S. Ct. 1246, 20 L. Ed. 2d 105 (1968); United States v. Hall, 342 F.2d 849 (4 Cir.1965). Defendants, however, overlooked two cases which approved the extensive use of written transcripts to facilitate the presentation of recorded testimony.

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